Global Challenges

A series of lectures on current issues in world politics – every first or second Wednesday of the month

In this series of lectures experts will provide a broad perspective and qualified background information on these global challenges. Each first or second Wednesday of the month a new present-day issue takes center stage in this series. This series is a co-production of Studium Generale and the Research Centre of Leiden University College.

Since March 2015 Yemen has become the battleground of a horrific war, which has led to one of the biggest humanitarian disasters in the world. More than 10,000 people have been killed and more than 60,000 people have been wounded, many of them civilians. Of the population 80 per cent is in need of humanitarian aid, and the destruction of the (social) infrastructure is beyond imagination. Marina de Regt has been working in and on Yemen since the early 1990s, first as a development worker and later as academic researcher. In this lecture she will give a background to the war, discuss the humanitarian crisis and the impact of the war on Yemeni society. She will outline the historical and political dimensions of the war, and in doing so bring more nuance to the idea that it is just a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. She will also make a plea for an engaged scholarship in which the voices of Yemenis and humanistic values take central stage.